Institutions - Pre-Phoenix

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Existing institutions

Bethesda Softworks

Let's be honest, there are plenty of institutions involved with game production and development that focus more on making money than actually producing a quality product. It's about having standards, and as anyone who has played TF2 will know, professionals have standards. We're not saying that companies like EA, giant, corporations that devour smaller more intuitive companies, stealing and assimilating the remainder of independent thought in the industry like the whole business is a game of Anaconda, we're not saying that they're not professionals. However there is a substantial difference between bureaucratic professionalism and creative professionalism. There's also a considerable difference between soulless minions of whichever incarnation of malice your spiritual beliefs allow, and ordinary people who work hard to make a good game. But that's just beating a dead horse now, on to actually talking about Bethesda.

Bethesda softworks are most notable for developing the Elder Scrolls series of games, they've created several other games, of varying quality, but the Elder Scrolls are consistently excellent, and have as such developed something of a cult following. Other things you should know about Bethesda include the fact that the company is a subsidiary of the Zenimax media group, and that the company was called Bethesda because they originally were based in Bethesda, Maryland.

Apart from being a bit crazy on the legalities of intellectual property and suing people for using the word 'scrolls', Bethesda seems like a good company run by gamers who really know how to create a brilliant gameplay experience. Bethesda was founded in 1986 by Christopher Weaver, who later formed Zenimax Media with Robert A. Altman. The current game director and executive producer for Bethesda is Todd Howard. Just throwing some facts your way there, Todd Howard looks a little bit like Gene Wilder. Fine, maybe only a little, barely even that really. Let's just move on to more institutional facts of institutions.

Bethesda both develop and publish games, the developing company is known as 'Bethesda Game Studios', while a more general term for the company is Bethesda Softworks. Both logos are included above. In terms of marketing, one of their most recent releases formed something of an internet phenomenon with it's trailer song, 'Drunken Whaler', an adaptation of the popular sea shanty, 'Drunken Sailor'. Upon release of the trailer, a downloadable variant of the song was requested and eventually released on the Bethesda blog.